


Jane Hearts Maura - A Mixture Tape Fic

by kbs_was_here



Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: F/F, Mixed Media, Mixtape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 09:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5863945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbs_was_here/pseuds/kbs_was_here
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane decides to make a mixtape to finally tell Maura how she feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jane Hearts Maura - A Mixture Tape Fic

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I wanted to make a fanmix for myself, but then it became a real life hipster project with an old boombox and an actual cassette and the smell of Sharpie markers.
> 
> Then I just planned to write maybe 100 words as a lead in to the tape itself. That turned into over 2000 words and this little ficlet.
> 
> The rest of this story is told through music and links to the playlists (and photos of the tape itself) can be found at tinyurl.com/janeheartsmaura

"I don't know. I'm not any good at talking about this kind of stuff." Jane mumbled between swigs of Blue Moon. 

It was a weeknight, but she was four beers deep because they were celebrating the break in a particularly rough case. Maura had already come and gone from The Dirty Robber, because she was eager to process a new batch of evidence. Jane had offered to accompany her, but Maura gave her a smile and a squeeze on the shoulder with some encouragement to relax and enjoy the evening. 

And it was because of that very moment they'd shared that everyone else felt the need to butt in and ask questions about Jane's personal business. Normally, they kept their mouths shut around her, but she knew they talked. Apparently, she wasn't as poker-faced as she'd always thought she was when it came to her feelings about Maura.

So now, she was at a table with Frost and Frankie, who both apparently thought it was their business to find out just what was up with Jane and Maura, if anything at all.

"Janie, it's so friggin' obvious. Even Ma thinks so."

"You talk to Ma about this?" Jane was mortified.

"It just comes up sometimes."

Jane rolled her eyes. "How? How does my non-existent love life with my best friend just come up?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe when you're at her house more than you're at your own apartment."

"Or when she does that thing when she brings you coffee," Frost offered. "Or takes you out for coffee. Or tells you when you've had enough coffee." He and Frankie exchanged a glance and both nodded.

"Oh, shut up. That's... stupid." She threw her best glare at her brother and her partner, but they were relentless tonight. "Fine, okay. Yes. I have... feelings. But I can't tell her."

Frankie shook his head. "Bullshit."

"No, I mean I physically am incapable of telling her. Every single time I think about it, I work myself into a panic attack." Jane grimaced, both at the thought and the fact that her beer bottle was now empty. "If we were in high school or something, then I could just make her a mixtape."

Frankie shrugged and signaled the bartender for another round.

But Frost didn't let the comment go. "Why not do that?"

"What? Make her a playlist?" Jane asked.

"No. Make her a tape."

"I'm not sixteen, Barry."

"So? Music is powerful."

"Hey, yeah," Frankie agreed. "You know who's really good at it?"

"No, Frankie," Jane grabbed for his phone, but he snatched it out of reach before she could. "Do not call him."

"Tommy's really good at making mixtapes," Frankie explained to Frost. "It's how he asked three girls to prom."

"Yeah, three girls to the same prom." Jane made another lunge, but Frankie slipped out of the booth and dialed. With him out of reach, she turned her attention back to Frost. "This is your fault."

"Look, you might think you can giving her puppy dog eyes all you want, but the rest of us are tired of it. Tell her. Woo her. Blow her mind."

Jane sagged on the booth bench. The guys weren't wrong. It would be a really good way for her to let Maura know what she was feeling. It definitely felt safer than trying to explain herself, face-to-face.

It also felt passive. She prided herself on her ability to step up and do what needed to be done. But, maybe letting someone else's words speak for her would be something Maura would appreciate, at least more than she would Jane just stammering in front of her.

"Hey, Janie!" came a tinny voice from Frankie's cell phone.

"What?" Jane shot back to the sound of Tommy's voice.

"It's all about the flow. Pick a theme," Tommy advised. "Girls love a theme."

"Thank you," the tone Jane used was loud and dismissive. "I can figure out how to make my own mixtape."

"You're makin' a mixtape?" came a voice from the booth behind her. Giovanni popped his head around the corner.

"Jesus." Jane wondered how easy it would be to just slide under the table.

"You gotta put Bon Jovi on it. No good mixtape is missin' Bon Jovi."

"I'll remember that. And now, I'm going to walk home to my apartment, so I can ask my dog what she thinks I should put on this tape." She eased out of the booth and quickly made her escape before any of them could stop her.

Though, before she made it to the door, Frost managed to call out, "And make sure the artwork's good! No one likes a nasty scribbly mix."

Jane resisted every urge she had to flip him off.

It was just after seven-thirty when she left the bar. By one-fifteen in the morning, she'd rummaged through every CD she still owned and mentally thanked her mother for never actually throwing out her old boombox, which Jane had rediscovered during Angela's downsizing yard sale when she'd moved out of the old house. It had been stashed in a closet, mostly because it was battery powered and it would be nice to have in an emergency.

She had a list at least thirty songs deep and she knew she'd have to make cuts. More importantly, she'd have to find tapes.

They actually weren't as difficult to locate as she'd imagined, the 24 hour CVS Pharmacy had a single pack available at a price that told her something she'd relied on so much during her teen years was now a hipster commodity.

By five o'clock, she'd finally finished laying down the last track on the ninety minute Maxell cassette. All the songs were older, because she was pulling from a pretty dated collection where most of the newer CDs were upgrades or replacements of her music library from before she entered the academy.

If she'd known Maura in high school, she probably would have made this exact mix.

She only managed about an hour of sleep before her alarm went off and she seriously considered taking her time or even calling in sick. But she'd put this off for so long that it was really just stupid to wait any longer. 

Plus, she'd just busted her ass on an all-nighter getting this damn tape put together, she was kind of proud of it.

Her original plan was to leave it at Maura's house after she knew Maura had already left for work. If it was sitting on the counter, she knew it would be quickly discovered because everything had a place and anything out of place would easily be seen. But the more Jane thought about that approach, she didn't like it. 

The concept of the tape itself was passive enough. She owed it to her best friend to at least give it to her in person.

But when she took an extraordinarily deep breath and stepped into the forensics lab, Maura wasn't in, yet. Jane checked the office, but it was empty. She tapped the plastic case against her open palm and began to reconsider the entire operation. Maybe it wasn't a good idea.

"I thought you might have overslept," came Maura's voice from behind her.

Jane spun around to face her. "Hey. Hi. No, I was looking for you."

"You didn't see me in the cafe? I know we didn't have a specific standing date for this morning, but would be a logical place to find me."

"I didn't stop at the cafe." Jane had purposely bypassed it because while she was mentally prepared to give the tape to Maura, she was certainly not going to do it in front of her mother.

"That's odd. Are you not feeling well?" Maura reached up to feel Jane's forehead. "It's unusual for you to not begin the day with your regular cup of coffee. And you are looking slightly flush."

Jane swatted her hand away. "I'm fine."

"Are you--"

But Jane cut her off. "I need you to not ask me a million questions. At least not until you let me give you this."

Maura looked down at the cassette tape clutched in Jane's hand. "What is it?"

"I made you a tape."

"Wouldn't it have been much easier to create a playlist?"

"Yes. Definitely. And I would have actually slept, last night."

"You were up all night making me this mixture tape?" It was practically reverent, the way Maura lifted it out of Jane's hand.

"mixtape." But even as she corrected her, Jane couldn't help laughing softly.

"What's the occasion?"

Currently, the clear plastic box was facing with the window side up, so the artwork wasn't evident, just yet. Before Maura had a chance to even try to look, Jane put her hand around the tape and the fingers that were holding it.

"You'll know when you listen to it. But, uh... look, if side A ends up being too weird for you, then just don't even bother with side B."

As the night had given way to early morning, Jane had consumed a few more beers in the process, making her bolder with the song choices. The first side was mostly embarrassingly on-the-nose love ballads, but side two was a little more explicit about Jane's feelings. As brilliant as she had felt in the moment when she was dubbing the final song, she was now regretting the choice to close with a particular Nine Inch Nails track. She was also second guessing her sloppy handwriting on the track listing and the fact that she’d been so drunk by the time she’d written the title on the spine that she had penned it upside-down. 

It didn't matter, because it was all in Maura's hands, now.

The thought that maybe Maura didn't even have a tape player immediately handy gave Jane a momentary sense of relief.

Except that Maura did, in fact, have one. Her heels clicked as she walked over to her desk, opened one of the drawers, and withdrew a Sony Walkman identical to one Jane had owned when she was in middle school.

"You keep that in your desk?"

"Many of the older autopsy notes haven't been digitized, so I need it, on occasion."

"You're going to listen to it, right now?"

"I'm still waiting on lab results from last night, so why not?"

"Okay, then I'm going to go upstairs."

"Would you like me to call you when I've finished listening?"

Jane wondered if Maura would even want to talk to her when the tape ended. "If you feel like it." She skirted out the door before Maura engaged her in any other conversation.

Before reporting to her desk, Jane stopped by the cafe to get her much needed coffee. Fortunately, there was a bit of a rush, so her mother didn't have time to ask her any questions, though from the curious looks she kept giving Jane, it was apparent Frankie or Tommy had said something to her.

She lingered just long enough to pour sugar into her coffee and was about to slip away when she felt a hand on her arm.

"How did Maura like her cassette?"

"Ma, I don't know."

"You didn't give it to her?"

"No, I did. She's listening to it, right now."

"I think it's romantic." Angels gave her daughter a light squeeze on the arm.

Jane knew it was a sign of approval, but she really wasn't in the mood to talk about it. The next hour and a half was going to feel like forever. "Thanks. I hope she does, too."

"Which Sinatra songs did you put on it?"

"None."

There was a glare of disapproval. "You better make another one."

"As much as I'd love to stand here and take requests, I need to go do my job where I'm a respected detective."

From her desk, Jane eyed the clock and when it had been forty-five minutes, she waited for her phone to light up with a rejection text. When it didn't, she wondered if Maura had been called away from her office for some reason.

"You look like you're about to climb the walls, kid." Korsak had been watching her from his seat.

"I might start."

"You know, not everyone else in this place is oblivious as you two."

Jane ignored him and tried to focus on reading a file, any file, in her in-box.

Finally, almost ninety minutes exactly from when Jane had taken the elevator up from the basement, her phone vibrated. It was Maura.

"Hello?"

"When I was studying abroad, I had a French admirer who would recite Baudelaire to me while we took moonlit walks through his family vineyard."

"Okay..." Jane had no idea what that meant.

"Despite the fact that Baudelaire is actually rather cynical about love, I've regarded that time as one of the most romantic periods of my life."

"I see." It made sense. Maura was all about wine and culture while Jane was all about... well, mixtapes and beer. She kicked herself for thinking some 80s hair bands and a cheap piece of plastic would even come close to registering on Maura's radar.

"This mixture tape--"

"Mix." Jane couldn't help herself.

"--makes all of that pale in comparison."

Jane nearly dropped her phone. "What?"

"I'm certain you heard me. The reception is quite excellent in this building."

"You liked it?" Her face couldn't stop pulling itself into a grin.

"Maybe you should come downstairs so I can properly tell you just how much I enjoyed it. Unless you'd prefer I respond with a tape of my own?"

Jane was already up and out of her seat, nearly body checking Frost on her way to the elevator. "I'll be right down."

"Must've been a hell of a tape," Frost said, slipping into his seat.

Korsak chuckled. "She could have given her a paper plate cut in the shape of a heart and it would have gotten the same result. The doc was just waiting for Jane to finally get her shit together and say something."

Downstairs, the elevator doors opened and Jane beelined right for Maura's office where she found the other woman waiting for her.

"Hey," Jane said.

Maura reached out and took Jane's hand. "You could have just told me what you were feeling, you know."

"But then I wouldn't be running on an hour of sleep and slightly delirious." As Maura pulled her closer, Jane furrowed her brow. "I am awake, right?"

"In dreams, reading the same words or phrase twice generally yields different results." Maura reached behind her and picked up the tape case, holding the title artwork toward Jane.

Jane glanced at it, knowing full well what it said. "Jane hearts Maura."

"Technically, it says 'Jane' and there's an image of a heart and then 'Maura.'"

"I know, wise ass, I had to freehand that whole thing."

Maura slipped both hands behind Jane's neck. "I don't think you should bother reading it a second time, because even if this is a dream, I don't want you to wake up."

Jane smiled into the kiss that followed. "Okay, but if one of us suddenly develops a superpower or zombies attack, you're stuck with me."

"I wouldn't have it any other way." Maura pressed more kisses to Jane's lips, then pulled back. "What most people consider a zombie outbreak could theoretically be possible if--"

"This is my dream and I request more kissing and less lecturing, please."

"So noted."


End file.
